Fear and anxiety

Okay, so for now we're going to have another talk within our beyond the plants environment and within the range of topics we are covering, so usually we are covering things that have some relation to ceremonial life and ease are happening before we jump into the ceremony while we are working with our intentions or happen within the ceremonial experience itself or whatever is important for plus processing for integration. Admittedly, the topic of fears and anxieties goes way beyond that, like we definitely encounter fears and anxieties in our everyday life, but usually this is what happens once we come to the ceremony, we definitely deal mostly with that, and I would say like 80% of those who are coming to the ceremony in some sort would experience the initial intent boiling down to fearing something or to having some sort of anxiety about something. And this is a really elusive beast if you consider what it is and in many respects it is the rather range of experiences, not just one particular fear or one particular anxiety. So it can range from stiffness, inability to express oneself, because there is some anxiety that I will not be appreciated or I have some guilt or some shame related to that. It can be whatever memories that come up throughout the process of thinking, okay, I am anxious because I used to be anxious about something. It might be a combination of fears and anxieties, so I had a particular event in my past, and I still fear that this is going to happen again. In the future, it can be very mild, it can be as acute as a real panic attack, going all the way down to the physiological perception of what a panic attack is. All the way down to asthma or pains related specifically to stomach pains, once we are thinking about anxiety, usually people end up having gastritis or even ulcers related to that. So pretty much, if you take the whole range of experiences related to fears and anxieties, it sort of shows up on so many different levels. So what we can counter here is that it can be and usually is embodied, and in many respects we see it as a body response to a particular mental stimulus, it is represented in emotional realm so that we've got some particular emotions, and that's what we usually call fear. So I fear something or I'm anxious about something, it's definitely an emotional syndrome. And there is quite usually a mental pattern related to that. It cycles and fears and anxieties, usually tend to cycle. It bothers as a mental concept, and it happens on these three levels, simultaneously, most probably, most often, more often than not. Before we jump into the whole topic and think about what it really means to deal with fears anxiety and ceremonial context, we definitely have to consider that we have to be careful with triggers, because sometimes triggers are shocks, so it's something that was triggered by a particular shock that happened sometimes ago and sort of created a condition for our system. And in some cases, we do remember this shock, in some others, it's suppressed enough that we cannot remember what it is. And if you take our world view and make it wider than we usually do, then it can be a particular shock related to something that we cannot and perhaps even technically cannot remember easily coming from some other, whatever it goes, some other trans-personal experiences. So a whole range of things, yeah. So let's try to be careful here on the setting that we have to follow a very trauma-informed approach, and once we consider, I have a fear, I have an anxiety, and I wish to deal with that in this ceremonial context, that we have to be knowledgeable about that. We can actually encounter and we can have to process the remader of a trauma that happened before. So we have to be ready for that. And actually, if you feel that we wish to work with that, it already means that there is a capacity to deal with that, but we need to be careful with who we come towards and what we are dealing with, and do it really trust the practitioner who's going to work with us in this regard so that we are safe enough. Again, safety is such a big word, there is no safety whatsoever, and there is always this level of uncertainty we are dealing with, but anyways, better be prepared. So what is a fear in very simple terms? Thinking about fear, once we fear something, we usually deal with our consciousness being sort of not really in a very present form. So we fear something that already happened, or we fear something that will happen perhaps. So from ceremonial perspective, or from shamanic perspective, but as well from psychological perspective, we are dealing with some sort of detachment happening on several levels. We can think about that as being detached from the persona that has experienced a particular traumatic event, and in traditional understanding, there is a word for that called Susta. You know what Susta means is again a range of syndromes, but like Susta can happen if a baby was dropped. It is said traditionally that a particular part of sole experience is sort of detached from the actual experience, and we have to deal with that, and a baby might not have resources to do it. But in more general sense, this Susta condition means that there is certain splitting of spiritual experience and concealing of part of experience through this traumatic event. So guidance within ceremonial context usually means reattaching and reintegrating this condition within the process of work. And while we are thinking about this detachment, it usually involves as well creation of particular memories, and memories is something that is embodied. So we never deal with memories that are not embodied. Say a particular fear might create a contraction around stomach. There are so many muscles around stomach, and there are so many layers of connective tissue. So the traumatic sharp creates this contraction, and because we do not have conscious, easy conscious way to reintegrate that and deal with our contraction, relaxing it, because it's really hard to understand how to relax your stomach muscles. And this memory might create a self-reinforcing pattern of contracting what's the same stimulus comes into the system. So in that sense, memory is always embodied. So if our physiology keeps traces of this shock, and then to be able to deal with the shock, and to reprocess the shock, we are going to need to figure out somehow how to see beyond this particular contraction observe that this particular issue that we are dealing with has relevance to the initial shock, and that's part of the work we are dealing with. So the mental and emotional patterns follow basically the same route. However, the sole reason that we are still dealing with this fear usually means that the access to the initial trauma or to the initial event is sort of concealed. That's why we are coming to a ceremony, still dealing with the same fear, yeah. Not much we can do through merely psychological means unless we go with this embodied perception and unless we are dealing with the body that keeps track of what happened before. A ceremonial work, specifically in the signal work, usually opens up all levels of our existence here by offering us access simultaneously to all three levels of body energy in mind, and through careful guidance if you are able to reintegrate all of them. In a sense fear has to do something with past, so we're going to come back to this later, but you can observe that working with fear is working with past, but past doesn't exist anymore. So from the perspective of our actual experience, we are dealing only with the present moment through which we are looking into this past. And because of the illusionary nature of past, we are seeing just the mask of this fear. So that's one thing, and let's keep it there for a while. Thinking of anxieties and seemingly that's a different thing. Seemingly, what is an anxiety that we are worrying about, something in the future, and there is a word for that and ship people language as much as there is a word for fear. For fear we would say a data meant for the anxiety we would say it's okas. So what is an anxiety? What is this okas? Well, that's something about the future, we are worrying that something is going to happen or something else will not happen as we expect that to happen. So we've got a particular image of the future, and we don't like this image of the future, we don't want this to come, or we've got a particular other image of the future, and we wish this image to materialize, however we worry that that won't happen like that. So are we dealing with something concrete here? That's a good question to ask ourselves. Again, we are still in the present moment creating an image of what does not exist, of an illusion of something, and the way it's going to be connected to the actual future is completely unknown. We are still leaving them completely uncertain, whether this will materialize or not. So in the sense we are dealing with a particular subtle agenda of the process, how we create this particular future, and we seem to be not knowing what kind of agenda we are keeping, otherwise we would not create this anxiety for nothing whatsoever, we usually don't have even this slightest ability to put our consciousness and do this particular stimulus reaction pattern so that we create the ability to relax at that very moment. So here is what ceremonial approach really does. On one hand, we are dealing with this reintegration process of past traumas, of past events. In the sense, it's very similar to the way digestion works. So as much we are digesting food, allowing it to be processed through our body, there is as well this emotional and mental digestion of whatever has happened, which has halted at some particular moment and not reintegrated further on. So this ceremony allows us to re-install this digestion process and allow it to be processed fully, and it's more than just the metaphor, by the way, because if you consider how much of what we are processing is connected to our gut flora, to our actual digestion, to the way our body really works with nutrients, it's pretty much the same, and medicine works on this level more often than you think. The other consideration about the ceremonial approach, once dealing with fears and anxieties, is that it goes into the process of contemplation by putting our consciousness into this pattern of stimulus reaction, sort of cutting through this chain, opening up the moment of reintegrating the stimulus and creating a opportunity for us to grow this gap and allow our consciousness to be there, we are creating seeds for the future. So from this perspective, ceremonial work with fear and anxiety usually, if done properly, allows us to create condition for the future, integration of whatever comes next, because this consciousness, integration, creates a new capacity for our mind to see within this chain of stimulus and reactions. So the first thing is definitely to admit fears and anxieties, just to make sure that we are actually dealing with that, and allowing ourselves to admit that, that this is the condition we are in, and most obviously we do not have much control on it. And admitting the deficiency is quite important, because it re-instructs our mind from safeguarding what we already have, safeguarding the container of our fears and anxieties into the learning process, opening it up and making ourselves more vulnerable in the sense, but saying, "Okay, we are in the safe spot, we can deal with this now." So the other thing is, and then here is what I am referring to once we have discussed fears, as well as anxieties here, there is a mask of fear and anxiety, there is a surfacial image of what we are dealing with. An example of my own experience, so I had one very particular dream work with some of my hidden fears, and I've been seeing a very vivid dream, a very lucid dream in suburbs of Moscow, or most of my childhood was spent seeing several figures coming to the fence, and understanding that these are the spirits of the disease, and they were very fearsome, like very, very fearsome, and they were ugly, and that was the reason why they were fearsome, so like I saw very ugly figures coming to me, and at that moment I vividly remember having a very particular choice of either blocking this and pushing them away, or staying in the presence of these ugly figures, and it was a very blissful moment of allowing myself to stand in front of them, doing nothing, not pushing them away, not inviting them to come, but just waiting there, and just by the virtue of standing and doing nothing and allowing myself the moment of observation, the faces of these spirits, as I saw them, in my dream work, started to shift, started to change, and in rapid sequence it showed up being not as fearful as I thought they were before, so at some moment they started being informative, they started to be communicative, and that was basically the work that happened at that very moment, that was, it was a very short work, and after that I felt an important release of some of my hidden fears related to this realm of that spirits, but what it told me, and what it taught me was that once we allow ourselves to just observe the mask of fear, it opens up an information or communication channel, so that we can actually look into that further, and once we are dealing with fears, usually we have this chain of fears, so we can go through this chain one by one saying, okay, I fear this and that, what if this happens, really? So okay, this already happens, imagine this already happened, do I fear anything else? What is the bigger fear behind it, and behind it, and behind it? In psychology, as all this ceremonial work, we rapidly understand that by following this chain of fears, which seems to be a sort of counterintuitive at once, but by following this chain of fears, we end up facing the existential fears, there are not many, there are not many for all of us, the existential fear of losing the body, once we are dying, like that everything going to discontinue, and the existential fear of losing the mind to go crazy, to behave suspicious with that, and we do not have issues with being crazy, our close ones have issues with us that we are going crazy, yes? So there are so many things related to that guilt and shame, and our reduced worldview, existential fears, usually deal with this very basic patterns of our thoughts that either come from early childhood, the way we were taught to be ashamed of something or are coming to our worldview of us being just material bodies, and nothing else, again, the way we were taught that we are, and these pre-conditions are pretty much hard while it's throughout our early education and upbringing, so by following this chain of fears, we quite often get this particular set of patterns, pre-recorded in our system, so what happens there is that admitting the observer to exist, allowing the observer to exist, as in my dream work happened to be admitting to my own personality to be able to stand still and not being affected by whatever happens, because there is nothing that can affect the observer in many respects. Observer is, by definition, the level of personality that does not actually change by whatever it is being observed, and particular layer of existence that is always still and just reflecting what comes to the mind, this becomes a healing process in itself, and finally what we encounter here is that there is a very particular condition of time that pops up, so if you consider fears or anxieties, they usually tend to be particular type of fixation of mind either within past or within future. Now, common sense tells us that there is no such thing as fixed past or fixed future. There are memories of past, and there are expectations of future, both of memories and expectations happen in present moment, otherwise you wouldn't be able to recognize them, and they are embodied in our physical system so that they become a constant reminder of what's happening. So, in a sense, re-educating ourselves to stay in the present moment, recognizing this present moment, rather than just saying, okay, time is now, but really recognizing that this is what I'm experiencing right now, becomes another healing tool for that. And the actual work starts to happen before we actually go into the ceremony, so the intention-based work before we jump into the ceremony is this seeding of observer capacity, seeding of consciousness capacity to cut through the chain of stimulus and reaction, and seeding of our capacity to see behind the mask, and sort of encounter our own brave part of personality that says, okay, and whatever, I go on the sea, I go on the handle that, because there is nothing that can harm me at that very moment. Obviously, requiring trust in the process and requiring this particular sense of calmness that can be cold upon, that can be asked to emerge, and that can be encountered. So, along ourselves to encounter the sense of calmness is what makes this work so powerful. So, this happens even before we jump into the ceremony, and in a sense, ceremony starts from that very moment. And the actual work that's medicine is the disentanglement process of the pattern, the patterning of what has caused the fear or anxiety. It can be purely ceremonial process, but as well, it can be longer medicinal process once we are dealing with other plans or other practices that allow us to reintegrate this knowledge again and again and again, observing the chains of patterns to reemerge and allowing ourselves to put our consciousness back into the same process. So, in very, very short, this is a basic toolset I wanted to explore a little bit, and I am very happy to discuss it with you. So, what do you think? Do you have any experiences related to that? What does make sense for you? Have you dealt with that in your ceremonial processes and just share your opinions? Let's talk. I have a question maybe to start with. Yeah, go on. Does it make a difference to know what brought fear or anxiety or not? Like what was the source? Sometimes I might have a feeling of like anxiety or like a fear, but it's very unclear what's what's the source and what brought it in and it makes it at least for myself kind of hard to work with it because I don't know what is what is this exactly. Yeah, that's a good question. Yeah, it definitely makes a difference and usually, from my perspective, once we have a good understanding of what was the initial traumatic event, we've got a way more capacity to deal with that because then we've got sort of already the process started of opening up the memory and it means that our consciousness is already there to deal with the initial condition. However, usually we do start with flurry like a range of emotions and the region fears without even knowing what has caused that. And there are some events, traumatic events that are quite known to us. They happen not a long time ago. There are some others that are pretty much concealed. They're very too strong like say experiences of sexual abuse or violence and our psyche does its best to conceal it and the memory can be quite concealed which again is important to understand the one spirit dealing with that from practitioner's perspective because we need to understand that we might be facing a particular trauma that's going to be encountered and we might need to work with a very dramatic outburst of emotions related to that so that's quite important. In some cases, we will not find traces of that within our own lifetime and the reason might be that say a particular experience might have been caused by what has happened very early before our memories were formed properly throughout the process of birth, for example. And again, depending on your world view, you might admit that there are some experiences that did not happen within the lifetime whatsoever. So if you come to the realization of the origin of here, then good for you. However, the existential fears by definition are coming from something deeper, you know, from the deeper understanding of the reality of dying and being born and then dying at some point of time. And there is a very powerful part of our self that does not want to die. And that's quite obvious. I mean, that's the whole purpose of self as a construct to protect us from having the discontinuity in our experiences. Technically we are dying every single moment and we are born again every single moment. If you try not to breathe for 15 minutes, you're gone, you know? So we are dead far from being dead, but we do not think about that because there is this protective self. And this protective self definitely makes its best not to be observed because it going to create a much bigger challenge for us how to deal with that. And usually fears build down to that. Great. Thank you. I have a question. Yeah. Yeah. Hi. So one question is obviously the fear of not being able to come back while you were in a deep experience in the ceremony, it's definitely something that arises when you multiple times. And another question that I have is, well, maybe relates to it. Yeah, it's like, it seems like there's a certain kind of a, it's almost like a reality threat that I eat in the ceremony that kind of ties me back to consensus reality as you call it. You know, so is it useful or not? And like what we'll just like in general, what's your insights about that? Thank you. Thank you. Yes. Starting with the first one, well, that's interesting really. If you are really honours with yourself, then if I am very honours with myself and thinking about what happens with me once I'm diving into this ceremonial process and who is coming back, I am most certainly recognized that the person that is coming back is not the same person as jumped into the process. So there is no thing of, there is no such thing as returning home in the same condition as I jumped into that. And that's like, that's like quite obvious from intellectual perspective, but it's quite unobvious from existential perceptions, so to say. So in many respects, the idea of going into the journey and returning back is fearful just because like in the same respect as any right of passage is producing fear. It's very logical to fear the right of passage. It's very logical because one definitely knows that the process of maturing aka is right of passage is about not coming back. It's definitely about not coming back is about that something else going to come back, someone else going to come back. And that's why the experience of dying within the ceremony is very important. Medicine does its best to make it very specific, where it can create experience of this is what going to die and this is you, you going to die for sure, like hundred percent. And many of us have experienced that resisting this, resisting this, being swallowed by the giant Anaconda, not willing this, it's really hard to be voluntarily swallowed by the Anaconda because then what going to be then, like I going to be dead and myself tells me, well, this is the only thing I don't want to know and I don't want to do. But why we are going through this right is another thing. It means that there is something else beyond this protective self that pushes us towards that. There is some evolutionary force, there is some life force and you know, like the actual ceremonial process can be rendered as reconnecting to this life force. But on practical terms, it means that the dying parts needs to die so that we can experience the undying part, the living part that always goes through that, like we just definitely trans person the way beyond the personality, otherwise it would be part of this protective self. So, and actually the frozen state, actually Natasha just mentioned the frozen by fear. This is an interesting thing, frozen means not the life, isn't it? So, because life is fluid, so we are sewing this frozen part in a sense and by sewing the frozen part, the icicle is dying, the ice is dying, there is no ice anymore, there is river and the actual recognition of this is understanding that river stays the river, whether it's frozen or whether it's evaporated or whether it's fluid, it's just all different states of existence, but existence keeps, keeps being there. However, that's not the existence of ourself as we used to know it. Yeah, no, everything is saying, I did experience and not once. I guess there's kind of like, there's an interest in, you know, after this process of being swallowed by Anakonda, being reborn and obviously, you know, letting go of certain parts of identification and being able to kind of like, find the center of, find a center of kind of center of my own being, not being part of what it used to be and something way deeper and something that survives that swallowing by Anakonda. I guess sometimes it kind of like it produces this kind of slight detachment from everything around, you know what I mean? It's kind of like, you know, like it's in a way, you're going, oh, like at some point, I realize that I'm not taking what's going on seriously. It's like, if I'm hit by a car tomorrow, it's okay. It might be a positive thing. Andrei, can you connect to excitement when you feel it? What's that? Can you connect to excitement? On the other side of the fear, there is excitement. The frozen state is gone. Once you start breathing into that fear, there is excitement. Can you connect to that? Yeah, of course. And then what happens? As I connect to that excitement, yeah, I feel alive. I feel linked to everything around me. So that's the meaning of being swallowing by Anakonda? Okay. Yeah, well, sorry, I jumped in, sorry. That's perfect. That's perfect. Yeah, connecting to what you were saying Natasha, it's, yeah, chemically we are dealing with this mind and matter game, you know, like the more the fiery nature of mind goes into the coldness of matter, you know, and connects to that and then throws this frozen state in a very symbolical way, you know, but definitely this brave component of ourselves is like in that particular episode of Dreamwork, the brave component of myself was to say, okay, I understand my ground. Not really, not not in the protective mode, not running away, but stand my ground and observe what's happening. In Buddhism, it's said like smile in front of your fear. Yes, smile in front of, you know, like there is this beautiful depiction of smiles, smiling skulls in Tibetan Buddhism. That's exactly the notion of smiling in front of something, which means that once I'm smiling, it means that I'm not pushing away. I'm saying, okay, I'm here. And again, again, it shows this exciting thing because, and then it might have a particular hint towards the anger reprocessing as well, because then anger is not a direct opposition of fear, but rather another representation of the same energy that is taking particular forms, different forms. And then the braveness of facing the anaconda at that very moment when you're about to be swallowed is by saying, fuck it all, I go into that. Really, I mean, technically it's this kind of reverence and all and devotion that opens up through this process by saying, okay, my existence is just partial remembrance of tiny shadow of the larger hole. I allow this to be shown. And that's pretty much the move you're making towards that. It's quite important to make this move because there there is definitely a real fear of dying, so at that very moment, if it is serious, then serious in the sense that, okay, this is end of it. So what are you going to do then? The way I was able to cross it was just by kind of a median that everything in my life lead me to that moment. And if I'm dying now, so be it. Yes, perfect. That's a very good way to render that. Everything in your life leads to this moment. And that's like, you know, recognition of presence. If you wait for the side, this is it. So that's this kind of thing. This is like the process of retraction of the focus from the past, everything in my life, into the present leads to this moment. Technically, it's like retraction of all of attention. So like, the attention is shifting into this very moment. That's what you render in words like everything in my life leads me to this. Yes, this is exactly this time-related work. And it creates dramatic imagery. This time-related work creates dramatic imagery. But the thing is that life is just in this very present moment. And there is no such thing as life without this present moment. Like everything else is just like fixed projection for the past or for the future. So connecting to life means technically connecting to presence. So thank you for the question or remark. Thank you. Good. Okay. Yeah. So that was the topic for today. And we might be exploring it further. Leave your comments in our chat. And if you think the topic needs to be explored further, put some questions. And we might have a next series related continuation of the same fear and anxiety. And bust in the future and like time-related work, dream-related work as well. So if you're exploring the ceremonial work and how to prepare and how to integrate. So basically here we are.